The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later:

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf

Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.

But books meant so much for him he forgot that they were a bewilderment to others.

Essentially these books consist of asking the reader to forget about the forest of Churchill’s life and instead focus on a few trees that a given writer believes deserve more attention

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs

Time is a river...and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time and live to bless the ages following.

Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us.

The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?

There are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot - that sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful, sideways staring eyes.

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.